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Top Tips For Choosing a Color Printer

Color printers are great, but the first question to ask yourself is “do you really need one”. If black and white documents are the only thing you ever print, then you don’t actually need a color printer at all, but if the documents you print have photographs or graphics then of course, a color printer is what you need. Okay, next question “do you need an inkjet or a laser printer”, it’s widely regarded that you can’t beat the speed and quality of a color laser printer, but they are the most expensive option, and you may be able to get adequate quality printing from a color inkjet printer for much less dosh. You need to look at this in more detail . . . which is why we’ve listed these . . .

Top Tips For Choosing a Color Printer

• Color Printer Speed – if the speed of your color printer is a main concern to you then don’t even consider the cheaper end of the inkjet color printer market ‘cos it’ll drive you nuts in a very short space of time. Consider the numbers, a midrange inkjet color printer can print out pages of text at around 14-17 each minute but color graphics can take a whole lot longer. Laser color printers, on the other hand, can print color pages at around 26 pages per minute with the first one appearing in less than 10 seconds. The question is . . . how quick do you want your color printer to spit out the pages, and how much will you pay for the privilege.
• Color Printer Quality – both types of  color printer are capable of printing high quality, professional photographs, but, particularly when we’re talking about inkjet printers, the more you pay for your color printer the better quality of printing you can expect. Some color inkjet printers are specifically designed to be able to produce photos of the highest quality so look out for one of those if you’re gonna be printing lots of photos and want the best quality you can possibly afford.
• Color Printer Resolution – is measured in dpi (dots per inch), and the more dpi your chosen color printer has, the better quality of the image you can expect. Some color printers these days offer a whole range of resolutions so you can choose to change it for each particular printing task. A standard resolution of 600×600 will be fine for most printing tasks, but for photo quality printing you will need more.
• Color Printer Consumable Costs – the cost of consumables is a big issue when you’re buying a new color printer, basically toner and cartridges . . . ‘cos if you do a lot of printing on your color printer then you’re gonna get through this stuff big style. Inkjet printers have a separate black cartridge which they need in order to print true black. Some inkjet color printers have a separate cartridge for each individual color which can work out to be quite economical in the long run . . . you only have to replace the color you’ve used up. It will cost you a lot more to replace a toner cartridge for a laser printer than it will to replace an inkjet cartridge – however – cost per page is actually less for a color laser printer.
• Color Printer and Reliability – when you’re talking about color printers, just like many other things in todays “throw away market” . . . you gets what you pays for. Some color printer brands are definitely more reliable than others, and will last for years longer. Some of the cheaper end of the color printer market are almost ”throw awayers” – consider this, is it better to spend $200 on a color printer which lasts for one year, or $800 on a color printer which lasts for more than 5 years. (Hey, nobody said there’d be math involved). Of course, if you don’t have the 800 bucks in the first place then it’s immaterial, but you can often save money in the long run, by spending more to start with.
• Color Printer – Try Before You Buy – never part with any hard earned cash for a color printer before you’ve actually seen it in action in the store. Look at the print quality for both text and images, paying close attention to the sharpness of the images.

There you are then, you now have the necessary information to go out and buy the best color printer you can afford to suit your needs. Happy printing!

Don’t worry, you don’t need to know all that stuff at this stage in your color printing, but I just thought it would be interesting . . . and it is!

That’s fun too!